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Sunday, 17 December 2017

The Responsibilities of Marriage

Hello people, its Christmas season and time
just flies by without us knowing. We thank God for the grace to see the last
month of another year and as we prepare for the incoming year, I will encourage
us to take stock of the past year and show gratitude to God.

In today’s post I pray and trust God to open
up our minds and our eyes of understanding to be able to know and understand
the depth of the responsibilities bestowed on us as married couples. More than
for just the show of affection to one another and more than just for the man to
have someone to handle the running on his life for him, we have a
responsibilities to God and to our society with our lives and the way we handle our
marriages.

As a wife when you accepted the call to marry
the man you call your husband, what you invariably accepted is the call to be a
tool in the hands of God to help make the life of that man you call husband
better than you met him. The Bible calls the wife a suitable helper and what
helpers do is to make that which they are to help better. Helpers makes things
better.

And the man who has accepted the call to be a
husband to a woman whom he call his wife has invariably accepted the call to be like Christ in the
life of the woman that he has accepted as his wife; to be to her and in her
life what Christ was and still is to the church. It’s not just about being the
boss in her life, but about being the one who cares for her and her every need,
being the one who protects her and nurtures her to perfection and then presents
her to himself as a perfect bride.

This is one of the many responsibilities of
marriage and its important that we understand these responsibilities well and
prepare for them well in our hearts and mind before we venture into the
marriage union. Marriage is beyond mere falling in love and wanting to be
together. The reality of marriage begins the moment the covenant of marriage
is signed and so before entering into that covenant it is important to have a
very clear understanding of what you are entering into and be well prepared for
it. If you are not ready to love a woman to the point of making her better than
she was when you met her, then its just important that you know that you are
not ready to be a husband to her yet. Being a husband is not about what you can get from the union but more about what you are prepared to give in to the union and what you are prepared to sacrifice for the union. It is what you give into your marriage that determines what you get from your marriage.

Making your wife better than you met her is
not achieved with force or stern discipline like you are trying to mold a
child. The woman whom you wish to marry or are married to is already a grown woman so the method of
impartation is quite different. This improvement we talk about is achieved through
love; deep, unconditional, unrelenting love, in the manner in which Christ
loves the church. A love that is strong enough to wash away impurities in a human character, love that is strong enough to turn wrong to right and still remain undented.

As a woman, its important that you know and
appreciate that marriage is not a bed of roses where you raise your feet and
have everything done for you in the name of love. In Genesis 2:18 God saw that
it was not good for the man to be alone and He purposed in His heart to make a suitable
helper for the man He had made and realized needed a helper. And so God made
the woman as a suitable, befitting helper to the man He had made. So as a woman
it is important that you realize that first and foremost the purpose of your
creation is to be a helper in the life of your man, so never expect your husband to
be perfect, but you need to realize and understand that you are the perfection your husband
needs. You are the one whom the Lord has created for him to make his life
complete and good after God realized that it was not good for the man to be
alone.

As a woman, wife and suitable helper, it is
important that you understand as you enter into that marriage union that you
are on assignment to be a suitable helper in the life of your husband such that
you help make him a better man than you met him. Your marriage covenant which
God stood to witness is you telling God that you are ready to be a tool in
His hands in making the life of your husband better than before. If this was
not your mindset when you got married to that man, then you got it all wrong
from the beginning.

Making your husband better than you met him is
not about forcing your opinion on him, you won’t get the job done in that
manner. Its about submitting to your husband in obedience and letting God use
your reverence, purity and humility as a tool in His (God) hands in making your
husband better. In yourself you cannot achieve the set goal that God has
assigned for you in marriage, but as a vessel in God’s hands you can achieve
much. It’s all about God bringing the best out of your husband through you and
not you literally changing your husband because no matter how you try it out
without God you cannot succeed, you will only get frustrated which will most likely
lead to a miserable marital life or divorce when the center can no longer hold.

And another responsibility of marriage is found in Malachi 2:15 and it reads, “Has
not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one?
Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit and do
not break faith with the wife of your youth.” The second responsibility of
marriage is the offspring the marriage produces. Are they the godly offspring
that the Lord was seeking?

In as much as this cannot be generalized and I
don’t have statistics to back this up, but based on my personal experience, I
have come to realize that marriages that are not functioning right often
produces children that are not functioning right. There are a lot of single
parents who are determined and are working very hard to make sure they raise godly
and responsible children and they are succeeding at it by the grace of God. But
the burden would have been lighter and the work easier if there were two
parents united as one with the fear of God and the power of God in them to
raise godly offspring that the Lord seeks.

In order not to make this post too lengthy, I
will stop here. In my next few posts, we will take a look at the impact of our
marriage on the lives of our children and search from the word of God on this
issues. Until then remain blessed.